


Between the Shadow and the Soul

by goldfinch



Category: In the Flesh (TV)
Genre: Growing Up Together, Homophobic Language, Implied/Referenced Character Death, M/M, War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-11
Updated: 2015-02-11
Packaged: 2018-03-11 14:48:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,314
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3330029
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/goldfinch/pseuds/goldfinch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The cave is theirs from the first day Kieren leads him out into the woods.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Between the Shadow and the Soul

**Author's Note:**

> A warning for Bill Macy: he uses several slurs, and just generally derogatory language - including some really terrible ideas - when talking about gays.
> 
> Title from Pablo Neruda's Sonnet XVII, the one that goes, 'I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,/ in secret, between the shadow and the soul'.

The cave is theirs from the first day Kieren leads him out into the woods. “I found this _place_ ,” he says, eyes shining, talking so much, so fast, that Rick can hardly keep up. Rick’s just had his birthday but he’s young: so young. They both are. Worn-out shoes and skinned knees, Kieren’s hair in his eyes because he refuses to let his mother cut it. Rick loves him. He can’t put those words to it yet, but his chest swells when he looks at Kieren and when Kieren grabs his arm and pulls him along he thinks, jubilantly, that he could live like this for the rest of his life. His shirt is filthy; his shoes untied. He can’t stop laughing, even as he runs.

The forest isn’t far from town, only round ten minutes. They’ve played here before, on the edges, darting in under the cool shadows, hide and seek or tag, physical games that leave them breathless, exhausted, fulfilled. Rick knows what the trees feel like overhead, the deep shadow on his skin: this is you, and not you. The dark and the light. He can hear a bird, somewhere. The pine needles crunch underfoot.

“I found it last weekend, but then you were gone on holiday—it’s brilliant, Rick, just wait. Okay, just here. Under here.”

The cave is cool, like being underground, damp and dusty but bigger than Rick would have thought. Kieren pulls him in, down to the flat stone floor. There is room enough to sit; there is even room, almost, to stand.

“It’s perfect for a hideout,” he says, looking about. They can bring blankets, and snacks, and make it a fort. Like a treehouse, but in the ground. Someplace safe. Someplace defensible. Kieren’s arm is warm against his own; their footprints overlap each other at the entrance. “Hey,” he says, points. “Check it out.”

Along the roof of the cave people have left marks, in Sharpie and chalk and what looks like ash, smudged and black. Names, mostly. Dates. Initials with hearts round them. 

“Who do you think all these people are?” Kieren asks.

Rick shrugs. “Who knows? Come on, Iet’s get some leaves and stuff for the floor.”

They spend all day out there, messing about; by the time they head home the sun’s turned the sky all different kinds of colors. They walk back slowly, kicking at rocks, throwing sticks off into the underbrush. Kieren’s limbs are loose and easy as he walks beside him, and Rick sways, bumps Kieren’s shoulder with his own. Kieren grins. Rick is, at that moment, content. These are the limits of his world, circumscribed in dusty footprints, the path of the river, the curve of Kieren’s shoulders in the dying sun.

 

 

 

 

Rick does alright at school, but he’s not great at maths; he can’t make the numbers line up in his head. He plugs everything into the equations, works them out like he’s supposed to, and still the answers are wrong. He wears down erasers, trying to make it work. It feels like some personal failing. Kieren gets better marks but doesn’t understand it any better—or not in a way that he can explain, so Rick has to go in after class, has to hunch at a desk in the front while their teacher explains everything again. Again. Day after day.

He prefers his and Kieren’s wild runs through the forest, when his muscles burn and he pants for breath, careening around trees. Slipping in the leaves. Kieren laughing. He’s quick, but Rick is more daring, more willing to get hurt.

He has other friends, of course: the kids on his footie team, Alfie from down the street, Peter from the inter-city rugby team. Sometimes he even lets Phillip in, because Kieren’s friends with him, though Rick doesn’t know why. Phillip’s awkward, and bossy. He doesn’t get their jokes, and can’t tell any of his own, and so Rick makes fun of him sometimes—he doesn’t mean to, it’s just so easy.

“You shouldn’t do that kind of thing,” Kieren says once, walking home. “To Phil, I mean.”

“Oh come on. It’s just a laugh.”

“It’s mean. It’s… people… when people do it to me, I don’t like it. He doesn’t either.”

Rick slows, stops. “Who does it to you?”

“Don’t worry about it.”

“Ren.”

“I can handle it meself,” Kieren says. 

Rick pulls back. “I didn’t—you’re my _friend_ ,” he says, because it seems to him that the word should explain everything—the tightness in his chest, the soaring joy, the pain. There is always pain. They are young, and growing up, well, it hurts. Sometimes Rick wakes with tears on his face, silent sobs catching his shoulders, shaking him down into a cocoon of sheets: he is a caterpillar, reforming. His bones are breaking into a thousand tiny pieces.

You’ll be taller than me soon, his father says, and ruffles his hair.

Kieren looks off down the walkway. “I know,” he says. “I didn’t mean— Just, be nicer to Phil, would you? Try?”

Rick nods. Smiles with half his mouth. “Only cause it’s you asking.” He means for it to be teasing, but Kieren shakes his head.

“It shouldn’t matter who asks.”

Rick frowns. But isn’t that the point? That he’ll do it because Kieren’s the one who wants it? Isn’t that what being friends means? He kicks at a pebble dislodged from someone’s yard; it clatters ahead of them on the walkway and then disappears behind a hedge.

 

 

 

 

He’s sitting in front of the television. The woman talking has an American accent, flat as the desert, scraped and shaved down to nothing; she’s talking about a court case. It’s May. At his back, sunk in the armchair, his dad is making disgusted sounds.

“God damn gays,” he says. “You know,” he says, to Rick, to the otherwise empty room—Rick’s mum is in the kitchen— “this is why we’re better off here than America. Massachusetts. There are good men dying in the middle east and they’re bothering with this shite. I tell yer, none of that would ever happen here.” He snorts, drinks, drinks again. 

Does he mean in England, or in Roarton specifically? Rick doesn’t follow the news but England is such a big place; it seems impossible that there is nowhere in it that he would fit any better than he does here. And yet, he fits, here, in Roarton. If he hunches his shoulders and pushes out his chest, if he twists his body into the shape his father wants. Quick hands, a good arm. A mouth that bruises. Eyes that look to Kieren, but never for very long. 

“Next thing yer know they’ll be letting them raise kids. It’s important, son,” this angled at Rick, “to never give them an inch.”

Them? Who is them? Them is the gay men and women celebrating on the telly, Them is the Labour Party, the men who want to fish in their river, the men who don’t belong here, the way Kieren doesn’t belong here, with his big animal eyes, his delicate hands, his quiet nature. I only draw people I love, he said once, not looking up. I draw love into them. I can’t do it any other way. So it’s a bit of a lost cause, because Rick’s already given an inch; he’s given Kieren miles and miles, but in secret, the deed written and signed in cave-light and whispers.

Rick looks back toward the telly.

Something in him has been made small, but he can’t turn to see what it is. His dad would know. Would sense it, somehow, if he looked. So he keeps watching the television in the same rigid posture, the image onscreen flipping from news to football to hunting show in the forest, the crack of a rifle, the echo, the invisible death.

 

 

 

 

 

The night before they start at sixth form he and Ren stay out late, too late, talking and laughing and then just sitting together, quiet, watching the stars. Rick’s dad doesn’t care if he stays out, if he drinks, if he gets in the occasional fight at school. Boys will be boys. But Kieren comes in the next day and says he’s been grounded.

“I don’t think they would have minded if it wasn’t the day before school started, honestly,” he says during the walk home. “You remember that night we snuck out to watch that meteor shower? I accidentally knocked a chair over when I came back, so I know they heard, but they didn’t do anything. Me mum was even kind of smiling the next day. Like she was proud of me, maybe, I don’t know.”

“It’s because you don’t get out much.” Rick grins. “What? It’s true. I’m always saying it, Ren: you’ve got to live a little.”

“I _do_.”

“Alfie’s having a party next weekend, then. After you’re grounded. Come with me.”

Kieren’s face stills, then goes through some complicated transition that Rick can’t quite follow. There’s hesitation there, for sure, maybe fear. But eventually it settles into something simpler, something excited and trusting, and he smiles. “Okay.” Rick wants him to always look like that, like he will do anything because it’s Rick who’s asking. Anyway, it will do him good. Kieren should get out more, have fun; he’s missing out, staying at home all the time. At the last party Rick went to, Alice Hooper sang fight songs and then made out three different blokes on the football team, and Clara Eun from history made them shots that tasted like pumpkin pie.

When Kieren comes by the house two weeks later he’s wearing his leather jacket, already looking away when Rick opens the door. He swings back with an embarrassed start. “Hi! Um, I hope this is okay?” He gestures at his jacket. “I wasn’t sure if there was, like, a dress code or anything—“

Rick grins. “It’s fine. You look great.” His shoulders hunch up as he steps forward, off the steps. He wants to touch Kieren but hesitates, tilts his head down the street instead. “Come on, let’s get going.”

Alfie’s parents aren’t out of town, but they’ve given him the house for the night, more or less. Rick doesn’t see them, anyway. Which means that it’s a lot like most other parties he’s been to: loud music, loud people, laughter and drinks and dancing in the little backyard. Five minutes after they get there he gets roped into doing shots with some of his mates from school, and loses sight of Kieren.

He has a drink, after the shots, and then another, and before he realizes it he’s drunk, the world swaying in a still-unfamiliar way. He reaches for things and overshoots, ends up with half a pint on his shirtsleeve and the other half down Lindsay McKane’s dress. “Ah, jesus, lemme—“ He lurches away, looking for a flannel, pawing through the kitchen drawers. The one he finds is the same checkered pattern as the shirt Kieren had worn under his jacket and—

“Kieren? Hey,” he pats Alfie’s shoulder. “You seen Ren?”

“Who?”

“Kieren Walker. Me mate. Skinny fucker, stupid hair…. He came with me.”

“Not a clue.”

Rick stumbles, laughing, into some girl’s back; she props him up, then ruffles his hair. He wanders off again, scanning the crowd.

And then there’s Kieren, just visible through the press of peopl, standing by himself near the drinks table. He looks listless, almost embarrassed, and it hurts, to see him like that, like he isn’t the most extraordinary person Rick’s ever met. Rick knows he gets picked on a bit at school, that Rick isn’t always there to stop it; Kieren’s smart, and artistic, and he doesn’t fit in, doesn't even try to. But he shouldn't look like that. Doesn't have any business looking like that. Rick pulls people out of his way, gets Kieren’s shoulders in his hands. He has to squint a bit to see him properly, even at rigid arm’s-length. “Ren,” he says, “have another drink.”

“No, it’s—it’s fine. I’m having fun.”

Except, that’s clearly not true. Rick shakes his head. “Nope. Come on, let’s go.” Kieren’s neck is warm against the crook of his elbow, and Kieren’s smiling now, for real, as they weave through the crowd and out onto the street, still swaying. Rick doesn’t have any direction in mind, but they end up at the edge of the forest. Kieren shoots him a conspiratorial look.

“The cave?”

Rick grins.

Sometimes people leave candles out, but when they get there it’s just the burnt-out remains of other people’s evenings. Rick pulls out his keychain flashlight, sets it upright on the floor between them. The shadows it casts are weird, layered sheaves of darkness folded over each other into pitch black. Kieren looks strange, in all that. The angles of his face are all wrong. And yet, he’s still—that is—

“You okay?” Kieren asks.

There’s something caught in Rick’s chest and throat, his veins, sharp and yearning. He wants—

So he does.

It’s a dry kiss, over as suddenly as it began, but Rick can feel it on his lips after, tingling and warm. Kieren stares at him like he’s just been shot, that same silent look of surprise. Is it painful? Rick wants to ask this, to put his hands against Kieren’s face. He can feel Kieren’s breath against his mouth, he's close enough to see the awe settling in Kieren’s eyes, the rising edges of his mouth.

Rick moves away first. He’s always been more willing to hurt.

 

 

 

 

 

It doesn’t change things, exactly. Rick wakes to a headache and the distinct feeling of panic, and spends the first ten minutes of his day bent over the bathroom sink with the door locked. He can’t quite bring himself to look in the mirror. It would be too easy to write off last night as a drunken misadventure, but he can still feel their kiss on his lips, a golden shadow of sensation.

It’s a Saturday. There’s no school, and Kieren will probably give him a day, at least, because that’s who Kieren is. So Rick gets a day. He takes his dad’s rifle out to the fields and takes pot shots at old bottles, missing more than he hits; he’s only ever been passable at guns, and now his hands shake a bit. His gaze wanders. Between the crack of the gun and the crack of the bottle, he gets bored.

“Well,” he dad says when he gets back, in this surprised, hearty-sounding voice. “If you’re interested I can take yer out, teach yer proper. Or, me and Jess and Gaz, some of the other boys, we go hunting every couple’a months.”

Last time, Rick had done so badly his dad packed up the guns and took the car, told him to walk home. Said it was to teach him a lesson, but Rick never figured out what he was supposed to have learned. But he’s never offered anything like this before. He’s taken Rick out shooting, but never…. “Yeah,” Rick says. “Yer sure?”

“The boys’ll do you good. You’re always hanging around with that Walker kid.”

“Because he’s me friend.”

His dad makes a noise in his throat. “Time you found new friends.”

Rick clenches his jaw. Swallows. “Yeah.”

He retreats to his room, afterward, throws some things around and presses at his eyes so hard he can feel them aching. He can stand up for Ren with the kids at school, but his dad—he can barely look his dad in the eye when he’s talking about Kieren. There’s something shameful in him and his father will know if he sees it, what it is and what it means. The only way he can do this is by shoving it down inside him, into some dark corner he’ll barely remember his way back to. Still. This is _Kieren_. Whenever Rick thinks of him it feels like throwing himself in front of a bus, so it must be love.

Rick breathes, reaches for the phone.

But it’s Jem he gets at first, and he spends five minutes trying to talk her into giving Kieren the phone. She wants to tell him about the camping trip she went on over the summer, wants to ask him if he knows how big salmon get in the peat rivers up in Scotland. “Up to fifteen kilograms,” she says, like it’s the most brilliant thing in the world. Rick sighs. He likes Ren’s sister well enough, but sometimes he thinks she has a crush on him. The way she looks at him, sometimes, it’s the way Kieren sometimes looks at him.

“Ren’s there, right?” he asks.

“Yeah, in his room.”

“Can you give him the phone? You can tell me about the salmon next time I’m over.”

“Promise?”

“Sure.”

That gets her off the line, anyway. And then Kieren’s breathing into the phone, the silence of waiting, and Rick says, “Meet me at the cave?”

Ren laughs a bit. He sounds relieved. “Fifteen minutes?”

 

 

 

 

 

Things with Ren balloon out so fast. Suddenly every glance between them is charged; every time Rick accidentally touches him it’s like he’s electrocuted himself. He’s never like this around girls, never awkward and dropping things, never tongue-tied in public. He itches to touch Ren but he can’t, he can’t, and so he pulls away, avoids him at school and then stares at him from across the room. Kieren doesn’t understand it. Rick looks at him, and knows.

“What’s your problem?” Kieren drops his hands down onto Rick’s desk after class on Tuesday, boxing him in. He’ll have to touch him to get out, which Rick thinks is probably the point. Rick casts a quick look round. They’re the only ones left, except for a few of the geekier students - blokes Kieren probably knows, but Rick wouldn’t be caught dead with. And the teacher, of course. No one’s looking at them, but Rick can’t get his mouth to open around the words he wants to say. I love you, Kieren. You’re standing too close.

He clenches his teeth. “Can we not do this here?”

But Kieren doesn’t move. His hands shift against the desk. “Where, then? The _cave_?”

“Ren. Come on, mate.”

“I just—I thought things would be different, now, and they aren’t. They’re exactly the same.”

“I’ve just got some shite to sort out, Ren. It’s… it’s nothing to do with you.”

“Yeah?”

“Promise. Me dad… well.” He shoves his binder into his rucksack, swings it over his shoulder. “Hey, come round for dinner sometime, yeah? Friday? Mum always fries chicken.”

Grudgingly, Kieren’s mouth curves up into a smile.

 

 

 

 

Ren comes round at five that Friday, and Rick sits him down on the couch and tells him about the rugby tournament coming up. His team is doing well, and he thinks they have a chance. He talks loud enough for his mum to hear, just in case.

It's alright until his dad gets home, walking in his boots through the kitchen, looking back at them the whole way. Rick's setting up glasses at the table and Ren's doing the tableware, the napkins. He's folding the napkins into triangles, pressing them down with the weight of his hand. His father looks like he wants to grab Kieren by the scruff of the neck and shake him. “What’s that boy doing round here?” Rick hears him say, and turns to watch, slyly, from the corner of his eye over Kieren's shoulder. His dad lifts a beer from the refrigerator, pops the cap off and takes a long swallow. “Don’t remember bein’ asked about this, Janet.”

His mum looks up from the oven. Her hand slips on the pan and she has to shift it a bit. “I just thought, he’s Rick’s friend. He and Rick have been friends for _years_ , Bill.”

Kieren used to come over all the time when he was younger, when Rick and him still ran round in the woods all day pretending to be soldiers, but it’s been ages, now. Not since before sixth form. Mostly Rick goes over to his house. Kieren’s parents might not be completely supportive - there’s always a weird atmosphere there when he’s over, but Kieren’s parents love him. They’ll love him no matter what. Rick doesn’t know that he could say that about either of his parents. His mother means well, but she’s more likely to lock herself in the bathroom than deal with a problem, and his dad’s support has always seemed conditional on Rick’s performance and bravado.

Dinner goes fine at first, though. Kieren tells a story about Rick’s most recent rugby practice match. Janet mentions running into Kieren’s mum at the Shop ’n Save the day before. “She said you’re thinking about art school?”

Kieren nods. “Yeah. London’s got a brilliant program—or Glasgow, even. Haven’t decided which ones I want to apply to yet.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Rick says, a smile slipping up the corners of his mouth. “You’ll get into all of em.”

At the other side of the table, Rick’s father snorts. “Well. You’ll fit right in there, lad like you.”

Kieren looks up. “How do you mean?”

“You know.” He looks at Kieren across the table, scrapes a piece of potato onto his fork and takes a bite. “All those poofs.” It’s pointed cruelty, meant to wound. “You ask me, that sort shouldn’t be round good, normal folk.”

Rick watches Kieren’s jaw clench. His own hand’s gone still over his plate; the potatoes taste like wet chalk in his mouth. This was a terrible idea. 

“You ask me,” Rick’s dad says, going back to his plate, “people like that should be rounded up, like.”

It’s carefully general; he’s not named names, not called Kieren out. But it hardly matters when everyone at the table know what he’s talking about. Rick sits on his left hand, clenches his right a bit tighter round his fork. His mum’s looking down at her plate, and he can’t catch her eye.

“Yeah,” Kieren says, “I bet you think we should be shot, too, huh? Just led out behind the shed and done in like dogs.”

Jesus, Ren, don’t make it _worse_ —

His dad shrugs. “Not a bad idea. Save you hanging round my son all the time. You might not look as much a poof as some but that don’t stop you being one, don’t stop you being weak. You think by hanging round boys like Rick they’ll rub off on you, do you? That why you’re always round?”

Kieren’s face is rigid, like something torn out of sheet metal, all the ragged edges.

 _No_ , Rick thinks, horrified. _Don’t. Don’t say it, not to him._

Kieren opens his mouth.

 

 

 

 

Rick is forbidden to see Kieren, after that. His father tells him, face spasming in spitting, near-speechless rage, that if he ever catches Kieren around the house again he will wring his scrawny neck. Rick is not to go near him. He is not to say Kieren’s name in this house. Which won’t stop them from seeing each other, of course; they have school together, still; they have the cave. They curl up there the next day, cool and close in a space that doesn’t feel as big as it did when they were kids. Soon it will be too cramped. Soon they won’t be able to fit in here at all.

“You shouldn’t have said that,” Rick says.

Beside him, Kieren stiffens. “I’m not ashamed of it.” And maybe once he would have looked away when he said that, but now he’s looking at Rick, daring him; now there’s steel in his spine. Rick sometimes wonders how this happened. Not the whole him and Ren thing, but Kieren going from soft-willed and quiet to telling Rick’s father he was in love with his son. In front of his mother, too. In front of the world. People have known for a while that Kieren’s gay, but Rick’s dad has developed a kind of selective blindness toward things like that. It would have been alright, if only Ren hadn’t spelled it out.

“Ren, it’s not—it’s not as easy, for me. Me dad…”

“Is an abusive arsehole.”

“No, it’s not like that. He never—he doesn’t _hit_ me, or anything, he just—“ But words fail him. He loves his father; he does not love his father. He does not hate his father.

Kieren curls closer. They don’t touch. “When you graduate, you can go to school. You can get away.” His eyes are wide, blue as summer skies in places Rick has never seen. Kieren is so smart; he could go anywhere he wanted. He hasn’t decided what he wants to do, yet, but it hardly matters when he could do anything. But Rick. Rick can’t imagine living anywhere else. It’s not a good feeling. This place is old, and slow; it has him by the ankles and the wrists—he knows already that he will never leave. But Kieren will be great one day, talented and important and recognized, and Rick wants that for him, so badly, with the ragged desperation of self-denial.

Don't give them an inch, his father says in his ear.

Rick moves forward. Tilts, really, like sliding off the edge of a cliff.

 

 

 

 

The war in the middle east spreads. Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, embassies bombed, markets bombed, people incinerated by fire, by explosions, by chemicals no one’s figured out yet. The terrorists put bombs in dead children, then lay them out for the army to find. 

His dad is always on about it. His old regiment, the LANCs, wasn’t even deployed when he was enlisted, but you wouldn’t know it by the way he talks. Like so much else it seems to just have been swept under the rug. His dad makes regular trips out to the veterans’ club in Blackpool, comes back still stinking of scotch and fired up about his time in the service. Those are good boys out there, he says. Good men.

In the cave, Kieren tastes like flavorless chapstick and smoke. They pass a fag between them, blowing smoke up in a hazy blue layer against the cave ceiling.

“So in this flat we’re going to have,” Ren says, “can I put me artwork on the walls?”

Somehow the vague plans of getting out of Roarton have turned into vague plans of them renting a flat together. Them driving to work together. Them eating breakfast together.

He closes his eyes, dreaming. “Only if we get a dog.”

On the walk home, after they’ve separated, Rick stops at his street corner. He can see his house, in the middle of the street, the door closed, the garden a bit overgrown. Can he and Kieren ever really have a place like that, something that’s theirs? It doesn’t quite seem possible. A hunched shape comes out along the side of the house: his father, carrying a rake. It’s fall. There are leaves on the grass and Rick's mouth still tastes like smoke.

 

 

 

 

 

“I got in!” Ren flies down the hallway, rucksack dangling from one hand; he stops just short of throwing his arms around Rick, but it’s a close thing, Rick can tell. He’s smiling so big. It lights up the dreary hallway of their school with its flatly inspirational posters, its squeaky linoleum, its dull-faced students. Kieren’s this great ball of light, and when Rick claps him on the arm he can feel the warmth bleeding off of him.

“Congratulations, mate. Which one?”

“London.” Ren laughs, giddy. “Full scholarship.”

As he dances away again, Rick’s still smiling, casting one quick eye down the length of Kieren’s spine. There’s a moment where he’s happy, where he’s as pleased as Kieren - and then he realizes what this means. Ren is going away. New place, new people, new friends. He’s been saying for years that Ren needs to get out of this place, but it’s harder to look pleased, after that.

He smiles anyway, though. Just in case Kieren looks back.

 

 

 

 

In the end it comes down to what he wants, what he is and isn’t willing to give up, what he doesn’t want to admit. It comes down, in the end, to the fact that he is afraid. There are good men dying in the middle east, his father says, looking at the television. On their weekend hunting trips (in the woods, the same woods; they passed by the cave once on their way out and Rick had shivered, like someone had just walked over his grave) his father talks about the war. He tells Rick stories about his days with the army, the fun he had. The memories he made.

“Happiest time of me life,” he says, “and there wasn’t even a war on fer most of it.”

It couldn’t be clearer. And anyway, it’s not like Rick’s got much of a future here, this place he’s stuck in; he might as well serve queen and country. So he signs the enlistment papers. Gets his uniform. His name tag. Macy, it says. His father’s name. People he doesn’t even know will look at their tellies in a few months and say: those are good boys out there, and he’ll be one of the boys they’re talking about.

He gets a week to say his goodbyes. He spends most of it either walking through the hills round Roarton, or holed up at Kieren’s, or at the cave. It’s nearly summer, and warm enough to stay out fairly late, so long as they’re wearing jumpers. It’s warm enough to sprawl out on the leaves with a blanket they tuck into the back of the cave when they’re done with it, and watch the stars come out.

The day before he leaves, he turns to Ren beside him in the cave, their initials long since graffitied on the ceiling above them, and leans in. They’ve kissed enough by now that it doesn’t take Kieren by surprise, like it had the first time, but Rick puts a hand on Kieren’s chest, his ribs, the jut of his hip, and Kieren goes still. He hears the beginning of a word in Kieren’s mouth, and closes his eyes.

“Ren,” he says. It makes everything okay.

Kieren’s hands are unsure, at first, then urgent and heavy, his weight between Rick’s sprawled-open thighs the sweetest thing in the world. Rick loves him, he loves him, he does, and oh, god, oh—

“Ren— _Ren_ —“

I love you, he thinks, but doesn’t say it. Won’t ever, now that the moment’s passed. But there are a lot of things he doesn’t say that night, that lie strangled in his throat, on his tongue, silent things in the dark. I’m leaving: the most important. He can’t do that to Kieren, not when he knows Ren loves him, except Ren’s leaving too. It will be easier when Rick’s miles and miles away, and there’s nothing to be done about it. He won’t be able to change his mind, once he’s gone.

They clean themselves up afterward, fumbling for things in candlelight. Kieren’s lost his cell phone; they find it pushed under the edge of the blanket. Rick pulls his buckle closed over his trousers.

“See you tomorrow,” he says. Whispers, knowing it’s a lie.

It feels like wringing his heart dry between his fists.

 

 

 

 

 

He likes the army, actually. He likes the camaraderie, how easily he’s accepted, the way everyone looks the same in their uniforms. No one can pick him out like this. He’s safe. Camouflaged. He runs, and crawls, and shoots, all those things his dad made him good at, and they give him achievement medals, and recommend him for special teams, and training. They put him in charge.

And then they send him to Afghanistan.

 

 

 

 

There’s nothing but light out in the desert. It’s so bright some of the drivers get a kind of snow-blindness from long hours at the wheel, all of them tearing up, a feeling like sand in their eyes and pain. That goes on until medical wises up and orders they all wear sunglasses. At night it's different. The green light of night vision goggles is like he’s stepped through the veil into a ghost world, where the enemy’s eyes glow like foxfire and Rick hides crouched like a spider in the dark. The silent green arcs of tracer rounds look like spells. “Avada Kedavra,” his whispers. But war isn’t clean. Death comes when you’re least expecting it.

His second week there, his convoy takes fire six minutes into a recon mission north of Bastion. No IEDs, just small arms fire, but the order comes down over the radio to hold their position. There are two more Rovers the next street over, but Rick’s squad is on its own for eight long minutes: an age, an eternity. At one point he has to get out of the Rover, because whatever wanker prepped this shite-bucket put the extra rounds of ammunition for the turret gun on the _outside_ , and when he opens the door he is certain that he is going to die. Delicate ping of bullets off the other side of the vehicle; the quick flash of rounds going over his head.

In that moment, heart clenched in certainty that he is going to die, he doesn’t think of his family, or of Roarton—he thinks of Kieren. His talent, his drive. His indefatigable good heart.

But they make it out alright, breathless with laughter, the bloke in the turret whooping overhead. Rick feels every pothole they hit on the road out.

When they stop for lunch rations, it’s beside the river, in the middle of nowhere, and Rick separates himself from the squad to watch the water flow. He tosses bits of trash in as he eats, vacuum-sealed plastic hacked to pieces with his pocketknife. His father gave him this knife, before he left. The river pulls the plastic under and downstream, invisible. The river doesn’t care what he throws in it. The river has seen worse. Plastic, weeds, blood, debris; the river stitches it all to a mend; it swallows everything.

That evening he buys a postcard from one of the men who also sells dirty films, low-budget shaky-camera affairs, spliced videos from the internet of men and women, women and women, women and men. It’s got a portrait of Van Gogh on the front. Of all things.

 _This shite with my Dad,_ he writes, _I’ll sort it. Swear I will._ He signs his name and then adds, right after, a hasty, certain x. Love. That’s what that means. He posts it the next day, after mess on the way back to his bunk. He can hear mortar rounds falling in the distance, an impersonal, thundering death. Somewhere out in the darkness of the city, the green ghost light, a man connects the last wire in an IED, then reaches for a blowtorch.

 

 

 

 

 

There are caves in Afghanistan, too. The media says that’s where the Taliban are hiding, where Osama Bin Laden is hiding, in a cave with rugs and guns and a video camera. Osama Bin Laden in the cold cave light, the stillness, the distant sound of water. Rick thinks about it sometimes, when he’s trying to sleep, how his limbs must curl up like a child’s, how his eyes must have adjusted, after a while. Rick’s never been in one of these caves himself. His patrols are all out in the desert, between cities, where his skin burns no matter how much sun lotion he puts on and he sometimes sees things moving out in the sand, vague and uncertain.

Does he see Kieren out there, ever? The shape of his body, the curve of his shoulders? His letter must have reached Roarton by now, and on the long drives between posts he imagines Kieren reading it. Imagines the life they’ll be living in a few years time, when he gets out of the army and goes home, and Kieren’s graduated art school. It’ll be like he wrote. Ren getting all these awards, and Rick cracking dumb jokes to make him laugh during the speeches. They’ll move away, out of Roarton, somewhere where Rick doesn’t feel like the only time he can really love Kieren is when he can’t see him.

They’re running late today, after the engine overheated on the road. Half an hour pouring water over the radiator, watching the steam rise. It's a wonder shit like that doesn't happen more often. But it means they've only half an hour to get back to base for evening formation when the bloke on turret pokes his head down into the Rover. “There some debris on the side of the road up ahead," the boy says. "Plastic bags and shite.”

There’s been stuff recently, in the official reports, about improvised explosives being planted by the side of the road. Crates, dead animals, piles of brush collected against nothing. But most of this roadside debris it just debris, abandoned furniture and trash. And they’ll get a real chewing out if they don’t make it back to base in time. Command doesn't have much patience for delays, even in wartime.

Rick looks at their Sergeant. He’s probably thinking the same thing. “Sir?”

“Go round it as much as we can,” the man says, and nods to the driver. “It’s probably nothing.”

The driver shrugs, wrenches the gearshift into first. “Onward, then,” Rick says, to himself. The white plastic moves in the wind, like that time he and Ren threw poppers up against trees in the forest, the tiny flash and crack of light, the scraps of paper floating, the smell of gunpowder. War has that same smell, powder and heat and giddy fear.

The plastic at the roadside flutters.

Rick wonders if—

**Author's Note:**

> Referenced historical events: May 17, 2004 - In the US, Massachusetts becomes the first state to allow same-sex couples to marry.


End file.
